Home Is Where The Heart Is
by PhoenixFalls
Summary: Everyone knows about Emily's crush on JJ except JJ (Based on an incorrect Criminal Minds quotes post by addictvshow on tumblr. Jemily fluff)


Penelope Garcia had never been good at sustained anger at her loved one. Especially not her best friends. Especially not when they hadn't really done anything wrong. She just wasn't...paying attention. "God, JJ!" Garcia voiced exasperatedly, throwing up her hands in a 'what am I supposed to do with you' gesture. "You are so aggravatingly clueless that I feel like you're doing this on purpose!"

Rather than offended, JJ looked alarmed and jerked her eyes away from Garcia to scan Rossi's backyard. Rossi and Matt were deep in conversation about the best way to prepare the meat Rossi had on his grill, Spencer nearby and trying to contribute by offering 'helpful' suggestions based on the things he'd read about the trigeminal senses. Tara and Emily were talking to each other over a card game. Satisfied, JJ's sense of offense finally appeared and she turned back to Garcia with a frown. "Why don't you just _yell_ it!"

Garcia rolled her eyes and shrugged, busying herself with refilling JJ's glass from the pitcher of sangria on the table next to them. "It's not like everyone doesn't already know." She pointed out diplomatically, ignoring her friends scowl.

"Already know what?" Reid asked, catching the tail end of the comment as he came over to graze on the cheese platter and hopefully have more familiarity with conversation than the dry rubs debate he'd just come from.

Garcia ignored the pointed look JJ shot her and elaborated for him. "Just that a certain BAU Unit Chief is totally smitten with our lovely JJ here."

"That's ridiculous!" JJ stage whispered angrily, "Emily doesn't have a crush on me!" she felt her cheeks warm and pleaded with any listening deities that the flush wasn't noticeable but judging by the look on Garcia's face, the gods were not on her side.

"A-ah!" Penelope responded gleefully. "You can't even _say_ it without blushing!"

JJ pinched the bridge of her nose. She was too old for this shit.

"But...yes, she does." Reid interjected thoughtfully while chewing on the end of a toothpick from his last bit of appetizer. Both women's jittery energy sobered suddenly at this comment.

"Um," JJ started inarticulately, blinking a few times to try and pull herself out of the high gear needed for keeping up with an excited Trying To Make A Point Penelope. "Come again?"

Reid twirled the toothpick around a few times, organizing the way he wanted to present his information before laying out his observations methodically in a chronological order. "When Emily first started, she watched you all the time. I mean, she still does, but she was worse at hiding it in the beginning and the biological symptoms of attraction and affection were always there; kind of spacey expression, slight flush, mirroring behaviour where she'd subconsciously copy your facial expressions...you know sometimes I'm close enough to see her pupils dilate when you're nearby." JJ looked like she wanted to him to stop and leave the conversation altogether in equal measure but the encouraging look on Garcia's face was enough to compel him to continue. "Whenever we have to double rooms, she always rooms with you even though Tara is on the team now,"

"It's just habit." JJ muttered but Reid continued as if he hadn't heard her.

"When Emily quit that time, she'd told Hotch that Garcia already tried to talk her out of it."

"And I did!" Garcia confirmed, her tone offering no doubt that she had given it her best shot too.

"But Emily was screening your calls because as persuasive as Garcia is," Garcia butted in with a faux-humble 'thank you.' "Emily rarely says no to you and I'm sure if you asked her, you'd find that she would have stayed if you had found out and asked her to." Reid shifted his weight, toothpick pinched delicately between his fingers while his hands gesticulated in tight repetitive formations as if it helped direct the flow of information. "After that case in Miami when you stopped pretending you and Will weren't dating, Emily was really moody and distracted for a period of time. JJ, when she went to Paris she broke a cardinal rule of the whole point of being there just to interact with you."

JJ frowned. "That was more for me, Spence."

Reid shook his head, unwilling to betray information told to him in confidence but wanting to make JJ understand. "Part of the reason I couldn't tell you were hiding her from me," he cleared his throat and corrected himself. "All of us, was because you were acting like you'd lost her, and in a way, you had."

Garcia had begun to rapidly tap JJ's arm in excitement and JJ shook her off, crossing her arms over her chest like she was trying to keep out the cold even though it was a warm spring afternoon. "So? That was _my_ thing."

Reid continued undeterred, nodding like that's the point he was trying to make. "You weren't the only one feeling like that. Between the two of you, I mean."

JJ shrugged uncomfortably and glanced over toward the ornate garden table to find Emily and Tara engaged in a clearly friendly, but heated debate, the card game forgotten.

"She used an Interpol jet without all the proper authorization to come here and help find you based on a fifteen point seven second conversation with Hotch."

"Any of us would do that for each other." JJ pointed out perturbedly.

"Not like that, pumpkin." Garcia pointed out merrily.

Reid nodded along with her. "Emily may have done some questionably moral things when I got arrested, but she still went through a lot more procedure and arguably has the same position now that she did in London. Before she moved back, when she was here following Michael Peterson, her reoccurring nightmare had shifted focus to not being able to save _you_ even though we were all in the same amount of danger-give or take five percent-until much later. Since she's come back, she's been more..." he looked up, twisting his fingers together purposelessly for a moment. "Not really closed off, but, _cautious_ , until relatively recently which tellingly coincided with the announcement you'd made that you and Will were separating."

Garcia reached over to playfully brush invisible dirt off his shoulder. "Dr. Spencer Reid, earning his paycheque at the BAU!"

JJ glared at Garcia for not being on her side. "Why do you even notice things like that?" she demanded hotly.

Reid shrugged in surprise. People were always accusing him of not noticing obvious things and here he was recounting his observations of the most obvious thing and somehow that wasn't right either. "I notice more than people think." he defended before grinning lopsidedly and adding "like Emily having a crush on you."

"Who's got a crush on who now?" Luke asked idly, gently pushing his way through the center of the trio to deposit a plate of BBQ chicken wings on the table.

"It's nothing." JJ grumbled at the same time Reid said "Emily on JJ."

Luke nodded absentmindedly and stood back to look at how much he was going to have to rearrange on the table to fit the other food once it was off the grill. "Yeah, what about it?"

"What about what what about it?" JJ pressed incredulously.

Luke resisted the urge to lick some errant barbeque sauce off his fingers and instead reached for a napkin, looking back and forth from JJ to Garcia to JJ to Reid and back to JJ while wiping his hands. "Is she serious?" he asked, nodding at JJ as if it hadn't been clear who he was talking about.

JJ wanted to scream. Instead she threw up her hands in exasperation and stalked off to the side yard to curb the urge to knock their heads together like the Three Stooges, throwing a "you're unbelievable" over her shoulder in a way that indicated it wouldn't be a good idea to follow her. She did her best not to petulantly stomp her way to the swinging bench facing the front of the house, tense and coiled as she dropped down onto the bench with a huff. She rested her elbows on her thighs and clasped her hands together, resting her chin on them. This was stupid, right? She had two children and an ex-husband. Why should she feel so much upheaval about a stupid crush? JJ forced herself to breathe rhythmically and deeply while she tried to organize her own thoughts. Spence couldn't be right. JJ had thought she made her attraction to the other woman pretty obvious in the beginning and while sometimes it seemed like Emily was picking up what she was putting down, JJ waited and waited for her to be comfortable enough to stop doing the one step forward two steps back thing so they could just move onto a date already, but then Emily had told her to go for Will. Had told her to go for Will when she'd decided scant hours before that she was going to just come out and tell Emily her feelings because she couldn't take not knowing.

Hadn't Emily's encouragement been statement enough? JJ frowned and pressed her hands to her temples, staring unfocused at the lush, deep green, and carefully maintained grass between her feet. Had Emily felt as lost without her as she did while Emily was in Paris? They talked to each other in the accompanying chat box during their games of Scrabble and Emily hadn't indicated that she was as untethered as she was. Though, to be fair, it wasn't like they could have had a direct conversation about anything that could give away their identities. Sure, she and Emily were pretty tactile with each other, but that's just the way their friendship worked because of the trust between them. Emily as actually a pretty affectionate person once she let someone in and JJ understood that she probably knew more about Emily than any living person outside Emily herself so that obviously lent itself to a certain amount of elevation in the way she showed affection, right? Christ, it wasn't like she'd never snuggled up with Garcia for a movie night but her feelings for Emily which had never atrophied clouded her ability to squash the desire to read into their interactions so she had to do it manually. Methodically reasoning out why she was being presumptuous and _childish_ for crying out loud!

JJ wiped a hand over her face and leaned back on the bench, closing her eyes and pushing her foot lightly against the ground to start a rocking motion. She spent way too much time trying to find a way to wrap up her feelings from Emily into a neat enough package that she could just lump it in one place where it'd be easier to ignore it. She was a fairly expert compartmentalizer in her own right though she went about it differently than Emily, she was just as deft at mentally locking something away and unpacking it when convenient but she never could compartmentalize Emily, no matter how much she'd tried. And she _had_ tried. A lot. When Emily had told JJ her feelings were one-sided without ever really acknowledging that her feelings even existed by pushing her to Will, JJ had thrown herself as fully as she was able into her relationship with him. And they had been happy for a while. Really happy even. But at no point did her feelings for Emily fade. JJ thought it would have been easier if she had just been inundated with feelings for Emily all at once when they started to grow because maybe somewhat paradoxically, a flood of emotions all at once was easier to box up all at once and put it away.

But it hadn't been an overwhelming bolt that struck her and electrified her wholly. It was just a warmth. A growing and spreading warmth made of all the best parts of what home was supposed to be seeping into her and filling any secret part it came into contact with. Even the very low places she hadn't shared with anyone, not even Will. Those dark places still hurt, but they weren't cold and they weren't empty since Emily. Somehow, without trying to, Emily had strengthened the wobbly places in her and she knew she'd done the same for her but the romantic feelings? The longing? The attraction? The love? That had been just as unplanned and JJ supposed it was the unplanned feelings that rooted the deepest. She and Will had worked hard at their relationship and they had genuinely loved each other but nothing with Emily ever felt like hard work even when it was. She could carry this around as long as Emily was in her life. She just had to accept the feelings and go forward without trying to erase them or stop them.

Sighing loudly, JJ rolled her neck on her shoulders, trying to ease some of the tightness out of her muscles which were only just starting to loosen again when she picked up the grass-muffled sound of someone approaching from behind her. She scowled and leaned forward again, dropping her head to her hands and squeezing her eyes harder like if she couldn't see them, they wouldn't bother her. It was probably Garcia. Penelope never let JJ sulk for very long, especially when she was the cause.

"I don't want to hear about it anymore," JJ said in a friendly but firm way that she had often used on reporters asking for further comments though she couldn't stop the edge of irritation creeping into her tone when she reiterated, "Emily does _not_ have a crush on me!"

"Yes I do." Emily's voice was amused and soft but JJ's eyes still snapped open and she almost got whiplash from how quickly she moved to confirm with her eyes what she'd heard with her ears. Emily had a small grin on her face as she approached the bench and gestured to the empty side. "Mind if I sit?"

JJ shook her head dumbly and put her feet flat on the ground to offer a bit of stability while Emily sat down. Emily sat slightly sideways on the bench, her right leg bent slightly to rest on the seat and the left pushing off the ground to resume the rocking movements JJ had stopped. She propped her elbow up on the backrest and leaned her head against her curled hand, watching JJ intently. She looked like she was trying not to laugh and despite JJ's inward mortification, she had a responding uncharacteristically shy smile on her lips in an instant. They just sat for a few minutes, watching each other carefully. JJ felt like a dolt. Now that she'd heard Emily say as much with her own ears, JJ had _no_ idea how she could have _possibly_ missed the way Emily looked at her. The way she was looking at her now. All this time, she'd been under the impression that she was just seeing her own feelings colouring Emily's features, her body language, her words and she'd been so conscious of not wanting Emily to push her away that she realized with an ironic epiphany that _she_ had been the one pushing _her_ away. The absurdity of JJ pulling a Prentiss the one time Prentiss herself decided not to was such a revelation that JJ couldn't help herself and she started to giggle.

Emily seemed to be following her train of thought like she could read words in her eyes and she started to chuckle too which escalated into a full on fit of laughter.

"Why didn't you tell me?" JJ asked a little breathlessly when they'd calmed down a bit.

Emily lifted one shoulder noncommittally. "I was scared." she admitted with almost an air of casual ease. "And by the time I wasn't, you'd been pregnant. You were happy so I was happy."

"But you left." JJ pointed out.

"Well," Emily reasoned with a nod. "I can be happy you're happy while still needing to do what I could to make sure _I_ was happy too."

JJ nodded, feeling a brief pang of shame that that hadn't been her first thought but it evaporated into nothing just as quickly as it had come. "Were you happy?"

Emily didn't answer right away and JJ hadn't expected her to. A question like that and any automatic answer would have been the one she thought had the least concrete version of the truth and they both knew it. JJ watched Emily study the little black marble birdbath near the side of the house, content to watch the other woman process while tracing the features she'd know in her sleep with her eyes.

"Sometimes." Emily answered finally, facing JJ again. "No matter what I did, I never got over feeling like I was on a really long work vacation." she admitted, idly reaching out to touch the ends of JJ's hair; a familiar gesture when they were alone and Emily felt like she was exposing too much. Almost like she had to make sure JJ was really there and really listening. "I belong here. This is my home, with the team. With you. How things come together or fall apart or rearrange is just what you sign up for when you have a home. I didn't know, because I'd never really had one before; I had never gone somewhere and breathed deep and thought 'man it's good to be home.' But I feel that with you guys so of course I had to stay."

JJ nodded and gently gripped the hand that was playing with her hair in both of hers. "And after?" she couldn't help but ask. "When Will and I were first separating and he moved out?"

Emily rolled her eyes heavenward. "God, JJ, I'm not going to swoop in on my vulnerable best friend who'd just split with her husband-amicable or no." she chuckled and put her free hand on top of JJ's. "I was trying to play it cool."

JJ laughed at the teasing note in Emily's voice and looked down at their hands, worrying her lower lip between her teeth for a moment before looking back up at Emily. "So what now?"

Emily leaned forward like she was going to share a secret and conspiratorially said "Now, I'm pretty sure I'm going to kiss you, is that okay?"

JJ felt her stomach flip and could do nothing but nod and close the distance between them, sighing audibly when Emily pulled a hand out of hers and rested it on the side of JJ's neck, her thumb stroking softly at at a soft cheek that was no rival for the softness of the blonde's lips. Their kiss was broken by laughing against each other's mouths when Tara excitedly shouted that Luke now owed her twenty dollars. They were still laughing when they exchanged several smaller chaste kisses on reluctantly pulling apart.

"JJ, I _told_ you!" Garcia called from the food table, gesturing to Reid with the tongs in her hand. " _Reid_ told you!"

"Me too!" Luke pointed out.

"Luke too!" Garcia echoed before clacking the tongs open and closed towards the women on the bench. "Now come get some superior veggie burgers and bring your girlfriend!"

JJ laughed and got off the swinging bench, holding out her hand to Emily. "Are you okay with that?"

"With what?" Emily asked innocently, maintaining hold of JJ's hand after she pulled herself up. "The veggie burgers or being your girlfriend?"

"Either. Both."

"It makes PG happy so I'll eat a veggie burger." Emily said feigning having given in at great expense. "I'll be your girlfriend because it makes _me_ happy."

JJ knew she had a goofy smile on her face because she could feel it. She felt deliriously giddy and impulsively leaned over quickly to kiss Emily's cheek. "It makes me happy too." she affirmed before they got swept up in Garcia insisting on planning their first date


End file.
